Three ideas to build a better future for child care in Ontario

The Ontario government has promised that their commitment of 100,000 new child care spaces will usher in a "transformative", "groundbreaking" and "visionary" new approach to early learning and child care. We need to hold them to this promise. Our community cannot settle for the status quo. Adding spaces alone, even 100,000 new spaces, does not in itself achieve system change. It merely replicates our current patchwork on a larger scale.

We need the Ontario government to ensure that our three ideas - an affordable fee scale, decent work for educators, and limiting for-profit child care - form the foundation of a new early years and child care system. With the province's renewed child care framework set to be announced in Spring 2017, there is an urgent need to ensure that our elected officials hear that our community has the solutions to Ontario's child care crisis.